


The Privilege of Love

by primasveraas



Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars Sequel Trilogy
Genre: Angst, Angst with a Happy Ending, Gen, M/M, Wound Mention, somone gets shot, spoiler free from tros
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-12-13
Updated: 2019-12-13
Packaged: 2021-02-26 03:20:09
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,074
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21776653
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/primasveraas/pseuds/primasveraas
Summary: Poe almost loses Finn. In war, you can reconcile with your feelings or die before you get the chance.
Relationships: Finn & Rey (Star Wars), Poe Dameron/Finn
Comments: 7
Kudos: 132





	The Privilege of Love

**Author's Note:**

> Requested on "Could you write a fic about how after a very dangerous mission and Poe almost losing Finn, he (poe) asks Finn on a date and can't believe his ears when finn says yes and he flies him to some very pretty planet and have a fun, heartwarming date?

Finn cried out in pain, and Poe fell apart.

At the least opportune moment, he lost all composure, in the middle of a firefight, a desperate, barely successful mission to pick up new allies for the Resistance. Responses to Leia’s call for help had trickled in slowly, but she seized every opportunity available to rebuild their forces. Or rather, Poe, Finn, and Rey did, at her behest.

However, these new recruits needed extraction. They were untrained and in the middle of a First Order-occupied planet, but the risk was determined to be worth it.

(“We’re sending in the calvary,” Leia had said grimly, referring to their trio. “We need everyone we can get to win this war.”)

At first, the mission had gone relatively well; they had gone undetected until their group was making its way back to the cargo ship they were using for incognito transport, and they were rapidly overcome by First Order troopers. Rey led the new forces, a scraggly group of about ten people, to safely, while Finn, Poe, and a few other ground fighters held off the endless waves of stormtroopers chasing them.

It was then when a blaster bolt struck Finn in the leg, and Poe forgot a lifetime of training.

He heard Finn’s yell, a terribly familiar thing after a decade with the Resistance- how many pilots’ dying screams had he listened to through his x-wing’s comms, how many friends had died just feet away from him- and his heart thudded to a stop in his chest. Poe’s instincts told him to _keep fighting, don’t look._ He had to stay alive, and that meant, sometimes, shooting first and examining the carnage later.

Finn, it seemed, was the exception.

With his blaster in one hand, Poe grabbed Finn’s arm with the other, half-carrying, half-dragging him behind the meager shelter of an abandoned speeder littering the street they had turned into a battlefield. He was trembling, he realized, as he held Finn’s face in his hands. The other man’s eyes were half shut, breaths coming in shudders.

“Finn! Finn-” Poe pleaded, shaking his shoulders slightly. “Come on, buddy.”

Finn's eyes opened suddenly, bright with pain. They focused on his companion's, flashing with fear. “Poe- my leg. I can’t walk.”

“I’ll help you. Look, it’s gonna be alright, just stay with me and it’ll all be fine.”

But Finn shook his head, his voice growing steadier. “I’ll be too slow. You go while you still can.”

Poe stared at Finn, suddenly overtaken by the imagine of Chewbacca descending from the ramp of the Millennium Falcon, Finn limp in his arms. For the briefest of seconds, the glory of destroying Starkiller Base had been squashed entirely. If Finn was dead, then it wouldn’t have been a true victory, and he knew it then, ever after meeting Finn just two days prior. Instinctually and instantly, he understood that Finn was an instrumental part of his existence, one that would be all the lesser without him in it.

The thought had become a recent subject of his nightmares, the more and more he spent his nights falling asleep thinking about Finn.

“No. You’re coming with me.”

And before Finn could protest, Poe stood, hauling their combined weight to stand. He slung Finn’s arm around his neck, raised his blaster, and shouted for his men to cover their retreat.

As they moved, slow and encumbered, Finn was silent, concentrating on his feet. Their journey was not gentle, bounding over rubble, almost endlessly, lengthening the frantic flee back to the safety of their ship.

They made it after an eternity, the last ones up the ramp, collapsing on the ground in an exhausted mess of limbs. Finn grunted in pain, more blaster bolts struck the side of their hull, one of his companions shouted “go, go, go!” towards the general vicinity of the cockpit, and the cargo hauler lurched into motion.

Poe untangled himself delicately from Finn, cautiously minding his wound.

“You’re gonna be okay, Finn.” The commander glanced up at his forces. “Lin, go get the medkit.”

With deliberate motion, Finn sat up, pressing his hand against his thigh. Poe, drenched in both his and Finn’s sweat, still shivered at the smell of charred flesh mingling in the air.

“Thank you,” he said. “For saving me.”

“Of course,” Poe replied instantly, with a brief smile that failed entirely to meet his eyes. “I wasn’t leaving you behind.”

The casual tone of his words sharply contrasted the intensity of his stare, an unusual seriousness tainted with something deeper that Finn couldn’t quite place. His mouth opened, question on his lips, but Lin returned with bacta patches and bandages, and the moment was lost. He was treated quickly enough, but before they could regain any semblance of privacy, Rey rushed in from the cockpit to Finn’s side, and after the latter had been made comfortable on a makeshift bed of emergency blankets, he was left to rest.

Poe watched him from across the cargo bay and wondered why he would never be able to let Finn go.

This was war. Poe had seen more death than he cared to think about, had learned to carefully navigate the line of personal investment and the very real possibility that they could all be dead tomorrow. He loved his friends, his fellow Resistance members, and unfailingly dedicated himself to the cause, but concurrently braced himself for the worst. Their own mortality confronted them in every waking second, and he was no stranger to accepting the loss of others.

Yet, despite the adaptive skill to endure endless casualties, Poe knew that if Finn of all people died, he would never recover. Maybe to the point of losing the ability to pretend that it was okay, to get out of bed and resume his responsibilities without acknowledging his own pain.

He released a long sigh, and turned away.

By the time they landed, Poe managed to justify his feelings. He would have saved any other of his friends like he did Finn, and it was only natural that he was afraid of losing someone he cared about. There was no difference between his feelings about Finn and his feelings about his other companions.

Aside, of course, from the feelings that caused him to watch Finn sleep peacefully from across the hull, studying the lines of his face, trying to memorize his every perfection in the span of their two-hour hyperspace journey.

The next afternoon, after a sleepless night and a busy morning, Poe accepted an invitation to play sabacc cards with Finn and Rey in the medbay, spending his lunch break to entertain his friend while he recovered, still constricted to bed.

“Poe. Are you okay?” Finn asked him for the second time, and Poe snapped back to reality, focusing on the cards in his hand. He supposed that this was better, to be caught lost in thought about his sabacc hand rather than anything else; just five minutes earlier, he had realized that he was staring at Finn and heat had rushed to his cheeks before he could rationalize why he was studying the corners of Finn’s mouth and the way they slyly turned up whenever he was about to smile.

No difference in feelings indeed.

“Uh- yeah. Just a long day.” He lied quickly, avoiding Finn’s eyes and flashing a tired smile, which, at the very least, was genuine. He had replayed the day before over and over again in his head, conducting fantasies both torturous and blissful. The paranoia of losing Finn made him ache, yet concurrently, he imagined a universe where he could have swept Finn off of his feet, away from danger, and kissed him senseless.

He was face-to-face with his affection now. Dismissing the truth was easier when he could turn away, ignore the thundering in his chest and put off his emotions for a day of calm that likely wouldn’t come until the war was over, whatever that meant for him.

Last night, as he tossed and turned, he realized that he had almost faced the horror of losing Finn, and barely prevented the sobs from escaping.

Both Finn and Rey were watching him carefully, mirror expressions of each other. Uncanny at times, they frequently possessed the ability to know exactly what the other was thinking, and would either act in tandem or finish each other’s thoughts accordingly.

“I’m fine, guys,” He told them, but the strain in his voice said otherwise. The pair accredited him enough to not question his words, although Finn fixed him with another concerned glance that he ignored, despite the pang that pierced his heart in doing so.

Poe tossed his losing cards on the borrowed medbay table, “I’m bombing out,” he announced in distracted defeat at the same time that Rey’s commlink buzzed and she cursed quietly under her breath. The men turned to her, and she sighed.

“The General needs me.” She stood from her chair next to the bed, then leaned down to kiss Finn’s cheek. “I’ll see you later!”

The Jedi smiled at them both, wide and earnest as always. Poe felt a pang of jealousy- not for the nature of the two’s relationship, because he did believe Finn’s assurances that they were indeed just friends- but for the ease with which Rey was able to demonstrate her bond with Finn. Force, how he wished that he could do the same, or even define their bond to begin with.

“You aren’t acting weird because of yesterday, are you? I know I shouldn’t have gotten injured, but I was covering for someone and-”

Holding up his hand, Poe cut him off. “No, no, that’s not it. I’m fine, really, buddy. Just glad you’re okay.”

“You know I don’t believe you, right?” Finn demanded, and Poe barely choked back a stranged laugh at his persistence.

“I do. I do trust that you don’t believe me, but this doesn’t really change much for me.”

“Why not?” He pestered. “Look, I don’t know what’s happened in the last day, but you can tell me.” He sat up straight in bed, pushing himself up with his arms. “Things went wrong yesterday. I’m sorry you had to worry about rescuing me too.”

The words hadn’t fully left his lips before Poe was shaking his head. “Don’t blame yourself, Finn. There was a lot going on in that battle.”

Nonetheless, Finn’s eyes met his, relentless. "Thank you for saving my life," he told him somberly.

Poe melted in his brown eyes instantly, worries of staidness aside. "Of course. It's what we do around here."

The steady gaze between them lingered far too long to be considered casual. For a split second, Poe broke his stare, eyes flitting to Finn's lips.

"Actually I- I really care about you Finn. I don't ever want something bad to happen to you."

The other man recoiled slightly, surprised. "That's hard to guarantee in this line of work, isn't it?"

The deep, forbidden longing arose in Poe, like an uncontrollable wave, washing over every fiber of his being. Finn was right: it was too dangerous to care, too dangerous to promise any semblance of safety, and most of all, too dangerous to love without being hurt.

It was too late for some of those things now. Poe's love expanded beyond him, into the darkest confines of the universe, pushing out his fear and inhibitions and will to stay stoic. He could die tomorrow, and it would never matter to the First Order or anyone else in the galaxy if he loved Finn openly and freely. Their bond was theirs, their love and affection and burden all the same.

He answered Finn carefully, "You know, it is. But some things are beyond my control."

Nodding silently, Finn seemed to understand. Then, a hand slid into his own and squeezed. Poe's heart skipped a beat and out of his chest.

"There's a place I know," he began, deliberately slowing his words. He felt that his happiness, if unchecked, could lead to a mess of rushed words and sentiments that he would never be able to fathom into sense. "just over the hill on the side of the base. If you're interested, I'd like to show you sometime. It's-" he was breathless suddenly and inexplicabably. Perhaps it was Finn, subconsciously leaning towards him or the glimmer of understanding that flashed across his face, "-it's lovely."

Another squeeze. "That sounds perfect."

**Author's Note:**

> This ended up being much angstier and much longer and more inspired by The Fault in Our Stars than I anticipated, especially with the title. Oh to be gay and in love in dangerous and dramatic times


End file.
